Two out of every three elementary and middle school teachers believe that students' lack of vocabulary significantly impacts their ability to understand classes, a study showed.

According to a report by the Korean Educational Development Institute titled "Exploration of Learner-Friendly Vocabulary Teaching and Learning Support Strategies and Content Development," the findings are based on an online survey conducted among elementary and middle school teachers from November 12 to 21 of last year.

In the survey involving 334 teachers, when asked about the impact of students' lacking vocabulary on class comprehension, the most common response was "it has a heavy impact," chosen by 220 respondents (65.9%).

This was followed by 109 respondents (32.6%) who answered "it has some impact," while only 5 respondents (1.5%) said "it has little impact."

This indicates that a large number of teachers perceive students' vocabulary deficiency as a serious issue.

The survey also found that teachers often use the internet rather than paper dictionaries when helping students who struggle to understand certain words.

When asked how they guide students who ask for the meaning of unfamiliar words (with multiple responses allowed), 322 teachers (96.4%) stated that they "explain known meanings tailored to the students' level."

This was followed by 191 teachers (57.2%) who said they "look up internet Korean dictionaries together with the students," and 93 teachers (27.8%) who reported "looking up internet materials (such as blogs, YouTube, and card news) together with the students."

Only 4 respondents (1.2%) answered that they "look up paper Korean dictionaries together with the students."

The proportion of using internet sources over paper dictionaries was overwhelmingly high.

Additionally, the analysis showed that elementary and middle school students encounter a relatively high number of unfamiliar words in Korean language and social studies textbooks.

The researchers also conducted an online survey targeting students from the 4th grade of elementary school to the 3rd grade of middle school between November 12 and 21 of last year, with 2,338 students participating.

In a question ranking subjects where students think difficult words frequently appear in textbooks, weights were assigned with 4 points for 1st rank, 3 points for 2nd rank, 2 points for 3rd rank, and 1 point for 4th rank, and averages were calculated.

As a result, the subject averages appeared in the order of social studies (2.84 points), Korean language (2.81 points), and science (2.63 points), while mathematics (1.82 points) was relatively low.

The researchers analyzed that "this suggests a high need for vocabulary support in learning social studies, Korean language, and science textbooks, which relatively feature many conceptual explanations and long texts."

However, when distinguishing between elementary and middle schools, there was a difference in the ranking of subjects with many difficult words.

For elementary schools, social studies (2.84 points) ranked higher than Korean language (2.71 points), whereas in middle schools, Korean language (2.90 points) ranked higher than social studies (2.85 points).

The report included recommendations highlighting the importance of a customized vocabulary learning support system to bridge the vocabulary gap among students.

The researchers emphasized that "since difficulties in vocabulary comprehension appear prominently in social studies for elementary students and in Korean language for middle school students, differentiated support measures are required for each school level."

They added that "various support measures should be devised to strengthen the internal soundness of vocabulary education within public education, such as reinforcing support for multicultural students and introducing reward systems based on learning history."

(Photo: Yonhap News)